You have access to this content through your organization’s enterprise subscription to the Aviation Week Intelligence Network (AWIN). Would you like to go there now? Your choice will be remembered until you close your browser.

Trump Seeks Sharp Funding Increase For Next-Gen Fighter

President Donald Trump is seeking a steep increase in funding this year to develop the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation ...

REGISTER FOR FREE ACCESS (Valid Email Required)

Register now for free access to "Trump Seeks Sharp Funding Increase For Next-Gen Fighter" and other premium content selected daily by our editors. Your free registration will also allow you to comment on any article posted to Aviationweek.com.

Current magazine subscribers: digital access to articles associated with your subscription are now included at no added charge to you. Simply use your subscriber email to log in to your account (or contact us for assistance in updating your account).

EVV_homedrone: "Mr Trump is president, not emperor. Don't be as thin-skinned as Mr Trump."

Where were you when Obama was boasting "I have a pen and a phone!" (the trumpet call of his Imperial presidency), getting people fired at CBS News for asking the wrong questions at White House press conferences, and using Federal law enforcement resources to determine who on his National Security staff was blogging critical comments about the Iran deal - and firing him, too?

Obama re-defined "thin-skinned" by stating that the people responsible for a downturn in his poll numbers were racist whites. Imagine how you would respond if Trump said the same thing, with the races reversed.

We have an immature Trumpf in the WH that quotes Hannity as a source (for something other than BS), takes away Meals on Wheels so that we can have a 12th carrier-target, let's his unproven unskilled son in law handle the sensitive Middle East, is fuming at Conan the Barb. for leaving the Apprentice, . . . ignorant of history (even recent history) . . . Breitbart . . no need to go on. OK, one more - saving the worst for last:

We have an egotistical adolescent in the WH that asked Putin for help during his candidacy. And maybe a lot more.

Why so many manifest such anger at Obama will be decided by the historians.

Murky you're spot on. The same people who criticize President Trump with derrogatory and just plain rude remarks are the same idiots who claimed racism and bigotry whenever Obama was criticized. They only know their way and if you disagree you must be stupid/racist/bigoted or uneducated.

Lara is correct. If you read the article carefully, the request is a supplement to the 2017 budget. That is THIS fiscal year, from October 2016 through October 2017, and was the Obama administration's last budget.

We need to get this going immediately, as it'll be a 10-year program, and lock in firm orders for at least 500 aircraft once the development is done. We must learn from the stupendous mistake of the part, aka F-35. Ignore any proposals from LM. Northrop just needs to dust off the plans to the YF-23 (which was a superior design compared to the YF-22) and tweak it with today's tech. GE can build in its YF120 engine, which was also superior to Pratts YF119 that powered the F-22. With these as a basis, aircraft can be fielded a lot sooner.

YF-23, as good as it was in the 1990s, was 1990s technology. We beed to be looking to the future, not the past (though I agree that LM blew it big time on their last two fighter contracts and ought to be locked out of future ones).

SAAB and Boeing could do MUCH worse than collaborate on the next generation of stealth fighters, using SAAB's FlygSystem 2020 as a starting point.

The insides, the brains should be new but the airframe could still be produced in original form. It was way ahead of its time. Sometimes you just can't improve upon what is already perfection. Like the shape of a shark in nature.

"The insides, the brains should be new but the airframe could still be produced in original form. It was way ahead of its time. Sometimes you just can't improve upon what is already perfection. Like the shape of a shark in nature"

Two objections: First, the airframe probably wasn't "smart" (with sensors embedded in its structural fabric, to report on airframe stresses and integrity or loss thereof. That was still on defense contractors' wish lists in the 1990s) or in other ways built for modern airframe control systems. Second, the shape of a stealth fighter evolves with new technology and with its mission. The F-22 (and presumably the YF-23) could be more stealthy than F-35 because neither airframe had to have room inside it for bombs as the F-35 does.

A follow-on to F-22 shouldn't be a design considered, tested extensively, produced in prototype, flown in competition with F-22 - and rejected. I've seen Northrop Grumman's documentary on the YF-23 and with all due respect to their engineering team, saw nothing that reinforces the narrative that the competition with Lockheed Martin for that fighter contract was "fixed".

The logical follow-on to a fighter designed in the 1990s isn't one the enemy's had twenty years to study and devise ways to kill in the air. It's a fighter with new technologies which no off-the-shelf missile or enemy fighter has been designed to detect and engage.

It's not just our military who thinks we ought to get off the pot in designing new stealth fighters. The Swedish AIr Force requested a similar increase in funding to get the GripenNG (aka "Gripen-E/F") at a fly-away cost much higher than the F-35's, because nothing in their cupboard will meet Russian fighter threats from 2020 on.

This isn't a military dominated by either of the two big US defense contractors speaking, this is a neutral country's air force taking a sober look at who's next door and how they'll defend their country against them. We ought to pay attention to them and see how much time we have.

No way the Gripen E will have a higher fly away cost than the F35. One a totally new design which is much heavier weight, the other is just a newer version of a 20 yr design.
AW says it this way: 'Swedish air force's fixed-price contract for 60 complete aircraft, converted from JAS 39Cs but with new engine, avionics and primary structure, equates to a flyaway price of $43 million.'
I know who I believe.

Spectre49: "As there is nothing to challenge it, the F-35 just needs to get working."

I'm not talking about replacing the F-35 and neither were the authors of the article. The issue is the follow-on for the F-22. NOTHING in our inventory, including the F-35, has that low a radar cross-section. Nor has the F-35 the air superiority capability of the F-22 because it was not desgined as an air superiority fighter - that was program officers legally bound to parrot the lies told by their bosses speaking.

We need that follow-on aircraft in development now to counter product-improved PAK-FAs and J20s and their follow-ons which will be in service at the time frame you're talking about.

You're ridiculous, dude. The Pak-FA and J-20 are multiple levels below the F-22 which itself is well behind the F-35 in the most important facets warfighting capability, i.e. in sensors and situational awareness. The F-35 is a multi role fighter/attack aircraft and it does air superiority - as in the ability to kill the bogey before he even realizes there is a threat - better than any other aircraft on the planet, including the F-22.

If the sensors and brains of the F-35 were combined with the airframe of the F-22, then you would have total aerial superiority.

In anyway, you reveal your total misunderstanding and ignorance by citing poor knockoffs of our F-22 as future game-changing threats.

If LM were "locked out" of a future competition, that competition would be tied up in the courts for many years. Even if your wish were granted and they were locked out, what would happen next is that LM would lay off thousands of engineers, factory workers, and others and whoever won the next contract would hire most of them as they needed to ramp-up to design and build the next fighter. How would this improve the situation you're complaining about?

The YF-23 was faster, longer-ranged, had more advanced engines and was stealthier. The YF120 was a superior engine over the YF119, lighter and was already a variable bypass design. As is normally the case, politics stepped in and the better product lost out .
Jeff: the problems are not with the engineers or workers but rather the management.

Would not be a competition, Jeff, but a development of an existing prototype design which was already proven to be superior to the YF-22, (do your own research to convince yourself). Employment in the industry has always been cyclical, but the problems at LM are the managers, not the workers.

maybe we could stop the runaway politically correct social programs and the billions spent on illegal immigrants and jihadists we could actually get a modern aircraft that isnt built by a committee of socialists.

Just how do "politically correct social programs" influence aerodynamics? Or do you just wish the military didn't have to concern itself with such trivial things as budgets? Even Mr Trump wants the military to be aware of costs.

And by the way, the socialist aircraft designers of the Soviet Union seemed to produce quite airworthy vehicles. Or at least that's what the military told us when they wanted to spend unlimited amounts of money to design and build new aircraft to "defend against the Soviet threat".

Stop lying. We have 13 million illegals and they pay tens of billions in taxes most of which they will never see such as social Security, Medicare, and numerous benefits programs. If fact according to SS illegals have generated so much and do not collect it that they have added years to the life of the program. You Trump children have to learn the truth.

Irrelevant. The YF-23 was a far superior design which was passed over based on purely political reasons. An aircraft that is evolved from it - and the YF120 engine (also a victim of politics) - would be far more cost effective and far more capable than just building more F-22s.

You are the ultimate one (failed) trick pony, like one of those Chatty Kathy dollies back in the sixties, that just keeps cycling through her canned recorded phrases every time one pulled her string. 'Cept Chatty Kathy could say more than one phrase, whereas you only know how to say "LM bad".

The Yf-23 was just the far superior design for the current threat picture and the future of air warfare. They were going to extend the area behind the cockpit to a longer length for superior air to air missile load and range. The aircraft was faster and would have had a much longer combat range. Fill it with the latest G whiz electronics and the next generation combat engines and this is exactly what is called for in the great Pacific expanse.

Woulda-coulda-shoulda. I'm agnostic about the YF-22/YF-23 flyoff, but that's history. A clean-sheet fighter design is also a non-starter. The budget to get to production doesn't exist. And "F-23" doesn't exist.
What -does- exist is the F-22 airframe, the F-22 avionics, the F-22 software and the F-35 avionics and software. And engines. Never forget engines.
How did the F-22 and F-35 development stretch into infinity? Avionics and software development and integration. Here's what we should do: warm up the subcontractor base for the F-22, do a best of breed avionics and software selection and in particular, include the MADL modem so it can talk to somebody but its sisters and restart production of an F-22B.